Web Information - More user friendly

Responding to user demand the PEFC Council, the world?s global umbrella for the development and mutual recognition of forest certification schemes, has launched an improved user-friendly web database.

"In addition to finding information on individual certificates and logo licenses etc, users can now obtain whole lists of forest management or chain of custody certificates or logo users by country, type of certificate as well as other general criteria." said Ben Gunneberg, PEFC Council Secretary General.

"Due to the rapid increase in forest management and chain of custody certificates being issued, the database is being updated at the beginning of each month and now contains more than 5500 records of PEFC certificate holders and logo users."

He added "We are continually analyzing the needs and requirements of users including industry and the general public to further develop our website and we welcome all feedback from users to help us improve our service."

Check out the revised database on http://www.pefc.org and click on "PEFC statistics"

Ends

Editor Notes

Forest certification is a process to provide an assurance mechanism to purchasers of wood and paper products that the wood used in the products comes from sustainably managed forest. Sustainably managed forest are those whose management implements performance standards based on internationally agreed environmental, social and economical requirements.

PEFC is a framework for the mutual recognition of credible national or regional forest certification schemes which have been developed to meet internationally recognised requirements for sustainable forest management. Since its launch in 1999, PEFC has become the largest forest certification umbrella organisation covering national schemes from all over the world, delivering hundreds of millions of tonnes of wood to the processing industry and then onto the market place from tens of millions of hectares of certified forests. PEFC has strong grass roots support from many stakeholders including the forestry sector, governments, trade associations, trade unions and non-governmental organisations.

To date, the PEFC Council has endorsed 13 schemes (out of the 26 member schemes) which account for over 46 million hectares of certified sustainably managed forests.

Schemes already endorsed by PEFC:

Schemes endorsed by PEFCC Hectares certified

• Austrian Forest Certification Scheme 3.924 000
• Belgian Forest Certification Scheme
• Czech Forest Certification Scheme 1.809 012
• Danish Forest Certification Scheme
• Finnish Forest Certification Scheme 21.910 000
• French Forest Certification Scheme 890 706
• German Forest Certification Scheme 6.273.658
• Latvian Forest Certification Scheme 17 295
• Norwegian LFS Certification Scheme 9.352 000
• Spanish Forest Certification Scheme 86 679
• Swedish Forest Certification Scheme 2.272.905
• Swiss Q Label Holz Scheme 64 572
• UK Certification Scheme for SFM

• Australia
• Brazil
• Chile
• Estonia
• Lithuania (effective as of registration of the joining organisation as a legal entity)
• Luxembourg
• Malaysia
• Slovak Republic